Two days ago when PLDT MyDSL conked out on virtually all of us, I was having my own problems with my Bayantel DSL here in my office. I couldn’t access most sites I go to such as Google and Twitter. I thought maybe OpenDNS can solve that problem. True enough, it did!

Yesterday though, while I was trying to access my site, DotaStrategy.com, the OpenDNS page of death appeared in my browser:

It says: If you experience this problem, we do not have any solution to this problem. We’ll fix this as soon as possible.

I say: How the heck are you going to fix it if you say you don’t have a solution??

Once again, I say goodbye to OpenDNS and hello normalized Internet!

My sources say Yahoo Philippines is ‘quietly’ setting up its local office at the Net One Center Net Cube Center building at the Fort in Taguig City. This confirms rumors that their office will be completed before the year ends. Jojo Anonuevo, Yahoo’s senior director for business development, is also said to be in the country. Anonuevo was the President of game publisher Mobius until June last year when he joined Yahoo. Interestingly enough, Mobius is housed in the same building.

Update: Jojo Anonuevo’s new role is General Manager for Philippine Operations and apparently has relocated back to the Philippines. It also appears that Aileen Apolo’s counterpart will not be Jonas delos Santos as I have speculated, but someone named Chris Concepcion. Watch the video below to get to know the two and what their plans are for the Philippine market. Note that Chris calls himself “the Yahoo representative here in the Philippines”. Jojo is the one on the left and Chris on the right.

Update 2: Yahoo has job openings for Partner Account Manager, Communications Specialist and a Search Editor & Analyst. Exact address of the office is 14th Floor Net Cube Center, 3rd Avenue corner 30th Street, Bonifacio Global City, Taguig City.

It’s the third time I forgot to bring my mouse over here at the office. I’m not the touchpad type of user so I usually don’t get any work done without a real mouse. Instead of stocking up on Gingko Biloba to increase circulation to my brain (thus improve memory, thus won’t forget the mouse), I ran down to the nearest PC store (which is equivalent to heaven, if there is one lol) to look for, well, a mouse.
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Could this be the future of air travel? Yves Rossy definitely thinks so. Rossy, a former fighter pilot, took five years to perfect his flying contraption. All his hard work pays off during his maiden flight on May 15, 2008. He zooms and spins in the sky and over the Swiss-effin-alps like there’s no tomorrow. *Kinda* reminds me of a certain character in Toy Story, but to hell with that. He’s way cooler. What I would give to be in his shoes, or wings, right now.

Video after the jump.

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Powerset enters the search engine realm with an offering of tools for users to search Wikipedia more effectively. Instead of keywords, Powerset’s technology harnesses the power of human conversation that serves as the backbone of their engine’s algorithm. That removes the need for users to always know the exact terms related to what they’re searching. Powerset does all the dirty work for you. The search results can be a bit daunting to digest if you’re used to Google. But for hardcore researchers, it’s easy to tell that Powerset leaves no stone unturned.

Apart from Wikipedia, Powerset plans to partner with other wiki-like sites to expand their database. Already, it is showing what the future of web search might be. A Google killer? Who knows? I’d dare say Microsoft would be better off buying them rather than play hide-and-seek with Yahoo. My bet is Powerset is already on Wikimedia’s Christmas shopping list by now.

One of the downsides of blogging is not knowing whether or not your readers are “getting it”.

Sure, you know what Gas tungsten arc welding is, but for us mere mortals, that sounds like a bad lab experiment back in college that we’d rather forget about. If you’re familiar with Snap Shots (see sample), Apture should feel right at home except that it gives you full control over your “info bubbles” and you have the power to assign bubbles only to the content that you choose right on your blog (unlike the arbitrary way that Snap does it). One great example we can use is Christine Gambito. Remember who she is? If not, click on her name (now na hahaha). I added Wikipedia, images and video to the info bubble to help jog your memory. Ok, done? You can add info bubbles to any text on your blog to give your users a rich multimedia experience, if not a lesson in history. The service is currently in beta and is accepting registrations.

Some bugs still need to be worked out, such as conflicts with flash objects and the inability to detect the same content on the main page and post page (meaning if you add bubbles from the main page, you’d have to do it again on the blog post).

After realizing that my 2-year-old Compaq laptop (aptly baptized as Maximus) wasn’t serving my needs anymore (despite my fruitless attempts at ‘pimping’ it), I decided to hunt for a new one while I as on a 10-day tour of Manila. In particular, I was looking for a lightweight yet powerful PC with quick processing speed, more-than-enough disk space and lots of RAM. I was getting kinda bored with Compaq’s and HP’s offerings and true enough, as I was scouring Glorietta’s Park Square, the picture was bleak. So I thought, why not a Vaio? I entered Electroworld’s store and saw a Sony display table with a Vaoi FZ on it. It was beautiful — a strikingly vivid 15-inch LCD screen, 250GB HD and 2GB of RAM — all that for just 74,000 pesos! The Electroworld guy said that the unit recently got a big price slash, something like 50%. So I was totally sold! When I was getting ready to buy it, I was told that the display unit was the last one they had in stock. Oh my. Ok, later dude, I’ll think about it, is what I told him. The security guard was even trying to convince me, saying the Vaio was put on display only on that day. Fortunately my cousin Ria was bugging me from outside the mall to haul my ass out coz she and her posse of blogger friends were waiting for me. I did go out empty-handed, which is good I guess, coz that would mean more PC-obsessing the next day. I looked up the FZ online and what do you know. The FZ that Electroworld was trying to sell to me did not have the specs I was told it had! The actual specs were: 15-inch non-LCD screen (but the colors were still pretty), 160GB HD and 2GB RAM. The specs above were for a different model that costs 160,000 pesos. Darnit.
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This is sort of a preemptive post since I said in my earlier one that the contest will end on May 8. Now is May 6, what’s the hurry? First of all, the day after I started the contest, AJ, always faster than a speeding bullet, made his entry here. His answer is Jonas delos Reyes. And guess what, he’s RIGHT!

To mark his Yahoo debut, Jonas makes his first official blog post on the Yahoo Philippines Answers blog:
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Three Reasons Why Manila Bulletin’s Website is Stuck in the Stone Age:

1. Their links to their news articles expire faster than you can say “Three Reasons Why Manila Bulletin’s Website is Stuck in the Stone Age”

2. Their links are expired, so what’s a regular guy like me to do?! Search! But:

3. No RSS feed! Nuff said.

Holler out to the editors of Manila Bulletin! Fire your web team, now na!!

Another round of PR updates rocked the Ratified.org system today, with 181 blogs gaining Pagerank and only 43 (whew) shaving off some green brownie points.

Congrats to the 8 blogs who broke out today:

Kubiertos
Bakla Ako, May Reklamo?
Market Manila
Photojunkie
Sasha Says…
Mapiles.com
Lightchasers Photography
keyboard monologues

A few notable bloggers inching towards the 100 mark:

Coy (#122), Brian (#134), Bloggista (#145) and Technogra.ph (#153).

If you have not been ratified, use this contact form. May take a while though. Also, I’d like to remind ratified bloggers to manage their feeds with Feedburner and activate the Awareness API so that our system can pick up your subscriber numbers.

Thanks!!

Last March 26, 2008, IBM launched a Corporate Service Corps program to help third world countries in various IT-related and socio-economic projects. Over a period of 3 years, the company will be sending about 600 of its employees to do volunteer work. Whether they will be working on a paid leave is unclear. For 2008, 100 volunteers composed of 12 teams will be sent to countries such as the Philippines, Vietnam, Ghana, Romania and Tanzania. Those assigned in the Philippines will be developing a system to track loan and grant beneficiaries of the Philippine Development Assistance Program. They will not be based in Manila, but in the less stressful areas of Davao City (yey) and Cagayan de Oro.

Chikka features a new web-based version of the original Chikka Messenger — the Chikka Text Messenger for the Web.

Google introduces stylin’ new themes for iGoogle done by famous artistic icons such as:
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iBlog4 was a huge success, but I have to admit that 90% of the time I wasn’t paying attention to the speakers. For me, it was a success because bloggers got to meet bloggers they’ve never met before. Ok, me being the blind antisocial one, I only met a few for the first time, such as Shari, Jerome, Markku, Fritz, Ade, Benj … my memory is failing me. It was nice to see AJ, Noemi, Aileen, Jay, Miguel and Juned around too. I expected to see Jehz there, but apparently his dictator of a girlfriend dragged him to Pangasinan for a scientific expedition. iBlog4 wouldn’t be complete if it weren’t for the company of my Davao friends Migs, Winston, Blogie and cousin Ria, who I might add, brought Malcolm Hall down with her entertaining talk. Yeah, Mindanao bloggers rule! ;p Kudos to Janette for a job well done.
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